Media

GOING, GOING, GONE: Real estate agent outrage over The Age’s kickback cuts

Real estate agents are believed to be gravely troubled by a decision by executives from the Rural Press faction within Fairfax to axe a kickback rebate paid to them for encouraging their clients to buy ads in the Age newspaper.

VEXNEWS understands that the Age wrote to advertising “placement agencies” yesterday to break the bad news to them.

It’s being seen as a desperate slash-and-burn effort to help boost the paper’s sagging bottom line.

The effect of it will be to remove a key pillar in the edifice of real estate agent loyalty to the left-wing newspaper which once practically had a monopoly as the “market-maker” in real estate in Melbourne.

A former Fairfax executive once explained to VEXNEWS his view that The Age actually “owned” the real estate market, was at the centre of it and was utterly indispensable while the agents and all other players were not. They certainly were ripping out monopoly profits from that market for a long time.

The internet changed all that, throwing up a competitor Fairfax could have and should have bought out in the early days in the form of realestate.com.au, now effectively part of News Corporation.

The Age’s termination of one of its key pay-offs to important decision-makers in real estate raises many issues:

■ Will the placement agencies survive? Most probably not.

■ Will The Age’s decision accelerate the decline in real estate classifieds?

■ Are these back-handers all illegal anyway, no matter how carefully structured by shrewd Fairfax in-house lawyer Gail Hambly, as secret commissions;

■ Will all forms of kickbacks to real estate agents from The Age soon be terminated?

Industry insiders tell VEXNEWS real estate agents are hopping mad about the change, with it likely to cost a medium sized agency as much as a few hundred thousand dollars a year.

The Age – a white hot centre of global warming doomsdayism – is truly staring into an abyss.

Those who’ve given it revenue to fund its quirky lefty ways for decades are screaming or walking away. Newsagents are disgusted. Real estate agents furious. Staff morale in the toilet under Paul Ramadge. Major disruption on the board, a share register rocked by the indebtedness of their biggest shareholder.

While the world will survive the hysteria of global warming, it seems now quite certain the print edition of The Age faces a real doomsday. The end is nigh.

© 2009 VEXNEWS 2010©.